Abstract
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
72.4637 AGUNYAI, Samuel Chukwudi ; OJAKOROTU, Victor —
Legislative committees are a critical part of any democratic, parliamentary, internal operating system. It is impossible to overstate their responsibilities in lawmaking, ensuring responsible representation of constituents, and monitoring government institutions to make certain that there is accountability to the public. However, the extent to which the Nigerian Parliament performs these functions through its committee system has been viewed with suspicion, as members who are supposed to expose corruption are deeply involved in it. In contrast, Singaporean parliamentary committees have had some success in combating corruption, as evidenced in the ranking of the country as the least corrupt in Asia. Given the significant difference in the two committee systems, the essay asks the question: What can Nigerians learn from the Singaporean parliamentary committee system about corruption control? [R, abr.]
72.4638 AINSLEY, Caitlin —
This paper examines the politicization of Federal Reserve (Fed) appointments. In contrast to the extant appointment literature’s almost exclusive focus on ideological proximity as a predictor of Fed nominations and confirmations, I theorize that senators will be more likely to vote against confirmation when their constituents have little confidence in the Fed because it allows them to more credibly defer blame on the Fed for economic downturns. Drawing on novel estimates of state-level confidence in the Fed as well as new common space estimates of senators’ and central bankers’ monetary policy preferences, I demonstrate that when constituents do not have confidence in the Fed, senators are less likely to vote in favor of confirmation regardless of their ideological proximity to the nominee. [R, abr.]
72.4639 BADAS, Alex ; SIMAS, Elizabeth —
Judicial nominations, particularly those to the Supreme Court, have been a salient topic in recent presidential and senate elections. However, there has been little research to determine whether judicial nominations motivate political behavior. Across three studies we demonstrate the important role judicial nominations play in influencing political behavior. We find that Republican subjects are more likely to select a primary candidate who prioritizes confirming conservative Supreme Court nominees. Among Democratic subjects, however, we find that Democratic candidates who prioritize the Court might actually suffer negative electoral consequences. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of judicial nominations as an electoral issue. [R, abr.]
72.4640 BALLARD, Andrew O. —
The study of agenda power has largely been the study of negative agenda power. But standard measures of negative agenda power are insufficient to measure the majority’s agenda choices: they only consider a small proportion of bills, only detail how often negative agenda power fails (rather than succeeds), and cannot help us understand positive agenda power. To understand the incentives and strategies of agenda decision-making, then, we must know about members’ preferences on all bills. I develop an approach to estimate members’ preferences on all bills, by generating quantitative characterizations of the policy content in each bill. I use the resulting estimates to examine both positive and negative agenda power using all bills and to directly compare levels of agenda power between chambers of the US Congress. [R, abr.]
72.4641 BEESLEY, Celeste ; HAWKINS, Darren ; MOFFITT, Nicholas —
Although the amount of policy-relevant academic research has grown in recent years, studies still find that policy practitioners seldom employ such research in their decisionmaking. This study considers potential methods for increasing government officials’ use of academic studies (impact evidence). We investigate how administrative accountability mechanisms as suggested by principal-agent approaches — screening, monitoring, autonomy and sanctions — correlate with practitioner engagement with impact evidence. Original survey data from 300 government officials in two developing countries, Peru and India, suggest that all four mechanisms are correlated with self-reported interest in or use of impact evidence. When we measured the actual use of such evidence on a website we created to facilitate that outcome; however, we found that only sanctions (income) correlate with actual use. [R, abr.]
72.4642 BJØRNSKOV, Christian ; VOIGT, Stefan —
Nine out of 10 constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, intended to help governments cope with extraordinary events that endanger many people or the existence of the state. We ask two questions: (1) does the constitutionalization of emergency provisions help governments to cope with disasters and other extraordinary events? (2) What particular parts of emergency constitutions fare best? We find that the more advantages emergency constitutions confer to the executive, the higher the number of people killed as a consequence of a natural disaster, controlling for its severity. As this is an unexpected result, we discuss a number of potential explanations, the most plausible being that governments use natural disasters as a pretext to enhance their power. [R, abr.]
72.4643 BLATRIX, Cécile ; EDEL, Frédéric ; LEDENVIC, Philippe, eds. —
Introduction by the editors. Articles by Bruno VILLALBA; Pierre CHASSÉ; Claire DEDIEU; Isabel DIAZ; Alice MAZEAUD; Martin BORTZMEYER, Robin DEGRON; Frédérique BERROD.
72.4644 BOLTON, Alexander ; THROWER, Sharece —
Whether unilateral actions are used to circumvent legislative policy preferences is a central question in separated systems. Although executives have incentives to engage in this behavior, US policymaking studies offer little evidence of it. We explore how intervals between legislative sessions can create such opportunities, depending on interbranch policy disagreement and legislatures’ special session powers. During intersession breaks, executives issue more executive orders under divided government relative to unified, but only when legislatures lack control over special sessions. Executives facing legislatures with such powers cannot exploit these breaks. We demonstrate these dynamics in the US states. Additionally, we find governors “wait out” legislatures without special session powers, engaging in more unilateral activity following the adjournment of sessions. [R, abr.]
72.4645 BROWN, Robert E. —
This article begins with a consideration of the putative parallels between the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, the nation’s 7th president, and Donald Trump, the 45th. Underlying Trump’s and his supporters’ partisan case for his Jacksonian populism and similarly volatile temperament is another argument explored in this article: that such a Jacksonian framing implicitly situates Trump in the pantheon of the nation’s greatest, most consequential presidents who have expanded the powers of the office itself. Several standards of judgment are adduced for the critical consideration of the Trump presidency as it nears the completion of its first term. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.4908]
72.4646 BUCHOLC, Marta ; KOMORNIK, Maciej —
The destruction of the rule of law in Poland continues, and the conflict with the EU is escalating. One-sixth of the judges in ordinary courts have now assumed office with the involvement of the National Council of the Judiciary. But as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has confirmed, their appointment contradicted European law. According to the ECJ, Polish courts are obligated to examine the independence of these judges and their rulings. The government has been backed into a corner and is reacting by intensifying the conflict. The Polish Constitutional Court, which is subservient to the government, has certified that the ECJ exceeded its powers, and that the Treaty on European Union is incompatible with the Polish constitution. [R, abr.]
72.4647 CHEIBUB, José Antonio ; RASCH, Bjørn Erik —
This paper analyses the institutions associated with government termination in parliamentary systems: no-confidence and confidence motions, and the early dissolution of the parliament. We consider constitutional texts for all European countries between 1800 and 2019 and identify two broad trends: (1) the constitutionalisation of practices that have first emerged as the result of strategic interactions between the government and the parliament; (2) the tendency towards protecting both the executive and the parliament from mutual interference. While the first tendency has culminated with an almost universal constitutionalisation of the principle of parliamentarism in European constitutions, the second led to the protection of executives and the extension of effective legislative terms. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.4655]
72.4648 DEYSINE, Anne —
L’article étudie le rôle de Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) en tant que juge minoritaire qui s’est efforcée de freiner la dérive à droite de la Cour suprême par la rédaction d’opinions dissidentes qu’elle a parfois lues à haute voix devant les médias, le public et ses collègues dont elle critiquait le raisonnement, la motivation et la décision. Elle s’est d’abord concentrée sur les questions de discrimination et d’égalité salariale ; ainsi dans l’affaire Ledbetter son opinion dissidente a poussé le Congrès à légiférer pour contrer l’interprétation restrictive de la Cour. Elle a ensuite dénoncé le traitement privilégié accordé à la liberté religieuse au détriment des lois anti-discriminations. En matière de droit de vote, RBG s‘est opposée à la majorité conservatrice qui valide systématiquement les modifications électorales discriminatoires adoptées par les majorités républicaines dans les États. [R, abr.]
72.4649 ENGSTROM, Erik J. ; PIETRYKA, Matthew T. ; SCOTT, John T. —
The widespread adoption of written constitutions is one of the most notable developments in institutional design in politics over the past 250 years. The American states offer a rich place to study constitutional innovation and imitation as being among the first political bodies to adopt constitutions and also given that they often replaced them, in both cases innovating and learning from one another. In this paper, we use quantitative text analysis to identify constitutional innovation and to investigate patterns of imitation. First, we find substantial textual borrowing between state constitutions. On average, 20 percent of a state’s constitutional language was borrowed directly from another state constitution. Second, states were more likely to borrow text from geographically proximate states, from temporally proximate state constitutions, and from states that shared similar partisan profiles. [R, abr.]
72.4650 FAGAN, E. J. ; McGEE, Zachary A. —
This article examines the relationship between demand for expert information from members of the US Congress and increased issuesalience in the public. As problems become salient, policymakers should seek out expert information to define problems and identify effective policy solutions to address those problems. Previous work on elite mass public representation and government problem-solving has relied on public actions by elected officials to evaluate this relationship. We rely instead on new data on the policy content of privately requested reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) from 1997 to 2017. We find strong evidence that members consult experts when issues become salient, even when controlling for legislative agendas. [R]
72.4651 GARWE, Christoph, et al. — Temporal strategies: governments alter the pace of legislation in bicameralism depending on electoral expectations. Legislative Studies Quarterly 47(1), Feb. 2022 : 127-156.
Does a government in a bicameral system strategically alter the length of the legislative process in the first chamber in anticipation of future majorities in the second chamber? Drawing on an existing formal model of dynamic policymaking, we argue that governing majorities strategically accelerate or delay their agenda when a potential majority change in the second chamber is imminent. If the government fears losing control over the second chamber, then the government accelerates their agenda. By contrast, if the government hopes to gain control over the second chamber, the government decelerates their agenda. We test our argument in Germany’s symmetric and asymmetric bicameralism by analyzing 1,966 governmental bills from 1998 to 2013. The analyses confirm our expectations for symmetric bicameralism. [R, abr.]
72.4652 GRAAF, Gjalt de ; HERTOGH, Marc —
In policy research, the search for the correct balance between proximity and independence has never been easy. Policymakers need proximity to the research in order to ensure that it is relevant. Yet, there are also concerns about the rigour of research. To analyze this relationship in more detail, this paper focuses on the ‘extreme case’ of the WODC in the Netherlands, an internal but formally independent research unit of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. Research methods include semi-structured interviews and a survey (N = 673). We conclude that government leans on WODC researchers in all phases of the policy research process. In most cases, WODC researchers successfully resist pressure from policymakers, yet continuing pressure may easily lead to research methods, conclusions and press releases being altered for policy reasons. [R, abr.]
72.4653 GRAY, Thomas R. ; JENKINS, Jeffery A. ; POTTER, Philip B. K. —
Research on presidential power delineates between a modern era of relative autonomy and an earlier period of congressional dominance. What drove this change? Unlike prior arguments about presidential entrepreneurship and the rise of the United States as a global power, we attribute the emergence of the modern presidency partially to an institutional change — the adoption of direct election of senators that culminated in the 17th Amendment. With direct election, senators were selected by individual voters rather than state legislators. These senators answered to a new principal — the general public — that was (in the aggregate) less informed and less interested in foreign policy. As a result, senators had less incentive to constrain presidential foreign policy preferences. We find evidence for this shift in the relationship between the piecemeal adoption of direct election and senate votes to delegate foreign policy authority to the executive. [R, abr.]
72.4654 HANSEN, Daniel —
A large literature establishes the benefits of central bank independence, yet very few have shown directly negative economic consequences. Furthermore, while prevailing monetary theory suggests CBI should enhance management of economic distress, I argue that independent central banks exhibit tepid responsiveness to banking instability due to a myopic focus on inflation. I show that banking crises produce larger unemployment shocks and credit and stock market contractions when the level of central bank independence is high. Further, I show that these significant economic costs are mitigated when central banks do not have the inflation-centric policy mandates predominantly considered necessary. When the bank has high operational and political independence, banks’ whose policy mandate does not rigidly prioritize inflation produce significantly better outcomes during banking crises. [R, abr.]
72.4655 HAZAN, Reuven Y. ; RASCH, Bjørn Erik —
The core feature of a parliamentary system is not that governments tend to emerge from the legislatures in some way or another, but their political responsibility to this body. While in only some parliamentary systems the government needs formal support of parliament in order to take office, in all parliamentary systems no government can survive against the will of parliament. The academic literature related to the rules for how governments form is vast. Strikingly, scholars have paid far less attention to unpacking the core institution of parliamentary systems of government — the confidence relationship and the various no confidence procedures. Placing the focus on how the parliament can hold the government accountable, this special issue assesses the larger influences legislative confidence has on executivelegislative relations, and improves our understanding of the ways in which the executive may be challenged or dismissed. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on "Parliaments and government termination", edited by the authors. See also Abstr. 72.4647, 4677, 4682, 4744, 5011, 5088, 5144, 5158]
72.4656 HERRICK, Rebekah ; THOMAS, Sue ; BARTHOLOMY, Kate —
In this paper, we present analysis of an original dataset of levels of colleague aggression among US state senators, whether women senators face more of these behaviors than men, and whether numerical and positional gender inequality in state senates affects these relationships. The results indicate that, overall, colleague aggression in US state senates is relatively rare, and, in general, women do not face more aggression than men. Under certain conditions, however, subsets of women senators experience more aggressive behaviors than their counterparts, male or female. [R, abr.]
72.4657 HJELMAR, Ulf ; PEDERSEN, Lene H. ; PEDERSEN, Rasmus T. —
Based on in-depth interviews with 15 Danish ex-ministers, this study shows how a minister’s specialized skills, knowledge and networks related to the decision-making processes of government are considered by the ministers themselves to be important contextual factors that can lead to a revolving-door scenario for an ex-minister. Conversely, political profiling and a negative celebrity effect are key mechanisms that are considered to lead to a closed-door career outcome for ex-ministers. This closed door career outcome may discourage people from seeking a political career in the first place, and it may result in politicians continuing in politics after having lost the motivation that originally inspired their political career. Thus, the closed door phenomenon constitutes a potential democratic problem. [R, abr.]
72.4658 HO, Carmen Jacqueline —
Little is known about why governments expand social policies serving groups with limited power on issues with low visibility. I call these “benevolent policies.” This class of social policies improves population well-being but produces minimal political gains for the governments enacting them. Why do governments expand benevolent policies if political incentives for reform are weak? I investigate this question by focusing on government responses to malnutrition. Drawing on nine months of fieldwork, including 71 interviews, I argue that the origins of policy expansion can be found in the government bureaucracy. Bureaucrats with technical expertise — technocrats — can play a defining role, deploying international pressure to court executive support and orchestrate policy change. Their actions help explain the Indonesian government’s unexpected expansion of nutrition policies, which serve low-income women and children and address micronutrient malnutrition. [R, abr.]
72.4659 HORST, Patrick —
Donald J. Trump’s disastrous presidency has been defined by his authoritarian personality, demagogic rhetoric, and despotic-chaotic governing style. The 45th president’s political accomplishments have been more modest than advertised, but his failures have been all the more grandiose. Trump’s two greatest blunders came in the final year of his presidency, when he first blatantly failed to combat the coronavirus pandemic and then, facing imminent defeat in the presidential election, lashed out at democracy and delegitimized the election. Trump refused to accept defeat, tried to convert the result of the election and incited his supporters to storm the Capitol. [R, abr.]
72.4660 HOWARD, Nicholas O. ; HUGHES, David A. —
We examine how elite attitudes and institutional rules and norms affect appointments to lower federal courts. Using voting data from 1,339 US Courts of Appeals cases, we estimate new ideological measures for 475 individual circuit judges appointed between 1913 and 2008. We find that both presidential and home-state senators’ preferences strongly predict judicial ideology. While we find evidence that conditions of senatorial courtesy can constrain presidents from nominating like-minded individuals for lower court vacancies, this trend peaked during the 1960s and has been eroding ever since. [R]
72.4661 JÁGR, David —
Professional politicians need a sufficient amount of quality and reliable information to work well. Therefore, parliaments across the world have expert resources at their disposal, such as parliamentary research services and libraries. Together they form a unique source of analytical and informative material to support day-to-day political activities. Although different models of expert parliamentary centres exist, these specialised comparative workplaces share a common emphasis on the independence of provided information. Since expert centres are an important part of parliamentary autonomy, their work and the quality of services they provide to their clients need to be further analysed. [R, abr.]
72.4662 JUDGE, David —
A prerequisite of ministerial accountability in the UK is the provision of accurate information by ministers and the Prime Minister to Parliament. This form of ‘informatory accountability’, and the expectation that ministers and the Prime Minister will not lie to Parliament, is at the core of parliamentary government. Yet, Boris Johnson’s premiership, characterised by a general propensity to mislead, to misinform, to tell untruths and to lie openly, has led to growing concern within Westminster at the PM’s proclivity to speak untruths in the Commons with seeming impunity. A study of the period from July 2019 to December 2021 examines the paradoxes and procedural problems that arise when the presumption that a Prime Minister will not lie or utter deliberate falsehoods in Westminster is upended. [R]
72.4663 KASLOVSKY, Jaclyn ; ROGOWSKI, Jon C. —
We study how officeholder gender affects issue accountability and examine whether constituents evaluate women and men legislators differently on the basis of their policy records. Data from 2008 through 2018 show that constituents’ approval ratings and vote-choices in US House elections are more responsive to the policy records of women legislators than of men legislators. These patterns are concentrated among politically aware constituents, but we find no evidence that the results are driven disproportionately by either women or men constituents or by issues that are gendered in stereotypical ways. Additional analyses suggest that while constituents penalize women and men legislators at similar rates for policy incongruence, women legislators are rewarded more than men as they are increasingly aligned with their constituents. [R, abr.]
72.4664 KISTNER, Michael R. —
In modern American politics, legislators fund-raise extensively on behalf of their parties. Under what conditions do parties develop systems to incentivize this fund-raising? Previous research has focused primarily on Congress, making it difficult to explain how systems of caucus fund-raising develop and change. This article takes advantage of a new source of evidence: the state legislatures. Using original data linking state legislators to leadership political action committees and campaign committees over a 12 year period, I show that competition for majority status leads legislators to contribute more to party organizations and candidates. This effect is driven partly by parties in competitive chambers selecting committee chairs on the basis of members’ contributions. Parties are able to institute these systems only when leadership is granted control over resources such as chair appointments, however. [R, abr.]
72.4665 KNECHTL, Valentin ; STUTZER, Alois — S
The Swiss Municipal Data Merger Tool (Swiss MDMT) offers a solution to a frequent data-management problem encountered when compiling longitudinal datasets involving Swiss municipalities as the observational units. Due to municipal mergers, the number of municipalities in Switzerland declined from 3,095 in 1960 to 2,202 in 2020. As a consequence, manually securing the correct spatial reference when merging historical cross-sectional data is tedious and time-consuming. To facilitate this operation, the Swiss MDMT considers mutations at the municipal level and maps municipalities of a first point in time to municipalities in a second point in time based on information provided by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office’s municipality inventory. The tool is distributed as an open-source R package and is freely available on CRAN. [R]
72.4666 KROEGER, Mary A. —
Bureaucratic influence in policymaking is often described as occurring subsequent to the legislative process and scholars argue that the legislative branch strategically constrains the bureaucracy via statutory language. A reality which complicates these claims and separation of powers research is that bureaucrats frequently play a role in creating the laws which ultimately govern their behavior. This project examines the extent to which bureaucrats attempt to and succeed in securing their preferred statutory language. I track bills introduced at bureaucrats’ request across 11 state legislatures. Legislatures extensively draw from agencies’ expertise in forming the agenda and crafting session law, with 9% of introduced bills and 21% of law coming from bureaucrats. A difference-in-differences analysis shows that committee chairs and legislators in the majority introduce more administrationinitiated bills. [R, abr.]
72.4667 MAKSE, Todd —
For legislators without legislative experience, credibility can be vital to achieving legislative success, and expertise from one’s professional background is a highly plausible source of such credibility. For example, when legislating in policy areas directly related to one’s previous occupation, a legislator’s colleagues may perceive policy instruments as more informed by expertise rather than ideological preferences. In this paper, I focus on several questions related to the linkage between professional background and legislative success, and specifically, the ability to guide authored bills through the legislative process. First, does a match between a legislator’s professional background and the topic of legislation make that legislation more likely to advance in the legislative process? Second, if so, does the importance of professional background dissipate as length of legislative service increases? Third, does the relevance of professional background systematically differ across types of legislators and legislatures? [R, abr.]
72.4668 MARANGONI, Francesco ; KREPPEL, Amie —
This article analyses the Draghi government in its first nine months in office, focusing on three main areas: (1) the formation and characteristics of the executive; (2) the positioning of the executive on the supranational political stage, in particular, its relationship with the European Union; (3) the legislative and policymaking activity of the Government. The main aim is to highlight the extent to which the technocratic nature of the executive played a role in each of these three areas of analysis. Elements of change and continuity with the governments of the recent past are also emphasized. [R] [See Abstr. 72.4771]
72.4669 MEAKIN, Alexandra ; GEDDES, Marc —
How do institutions adapt and reform themselves in response to new challenges? This article considers the role of ideas and posits that the concept of ‘dilemma’ — clashes of beliefs played out through power relations and practices — offers a complementary tool to understand institutional change. It draws on the 2014 appointment of a new Clerk to the UK House of Commons — in which conflicting beliefs about the House of Commons administration opened a dilemma for key parliamentary actors — as a token case study to highlight the value of the concepts of beliefs, practices and dilemmas. It further broadens out these findings to consider the value of a wider interpretive approach for understanding how institutions may adapt and change. In doing so, it makes (1) a theoretical contribution by exploring the role of ideas in causing institutional change and (2) an empirical contribution through its analysis of parliamentary administration, an understudied area. [R]
72.4670 MILLER, David R. —
Organized interests routinely seek direct contacts with, or access to, members of Congress to advance their policy goals. While studies often explore the tactics interests use to obtain access, few examine interests’ strategic considerations in choosing which members to target. Furthermore, the few empirical studies that examine organized interests’ targeting strategies yield inconclusive results concerning the types of members interests target. This article presents a conjoint experiment with federal lobbyists and policy advocates — a novel experimental sample in political science — to evaluate which types of members organized interests target when trying to advance a proposal in an empirical framework that addresses some of the inferential challenges faced by prior studies. [R, abr.]
72.4671 MIRAS, Nicholas S. ; ROUSE, Stella M. —
When one political party gains control of American national governing institutions, it increases the prospects of enacting its policy agenda. Faced with this partisan misalignment, the authors expect state governments controlled by the national out-party to respond to the national partisan context with more state policy activism. The study examines changes in state policy liberalism from 1974 to 2019, and finds that both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states have pushed policy further in their preferred ideological directions when the opposing party has greater partisan control over the national policy agenda in Washington. It also identifies differences between the two parties. While the effect of Republican control modestly increases as Democrats gain power at the national level, Democratic-controlled states have shown dramatically larger shifts in policy liberalism during periods of Republican national control. [R, abr.]
72.4672 NIELSEN, Peter Heyn —
Are unpopular ministers more likely to be forced out of office than their colleagues in Cabinet? This study examines the relationship between ministers’ unpopularity and their duration in office. By examining opinion polls on the popularity of ministers in Denmark in the period 1978 to 2019, the analysis shows that when Danish Prime Ministers choose to dismiss ministers, they dismiss ministers who are relatively less popular than their colleagues in the Cabinet. Statistical analyses show that less popular ministers have a higher probability of being dismissed. This is particularly true for ministers outside the inner circles of Cabinet. These results suggest that opinion polls on ministers’ individual popularity have been neglected in political science so far and should be considered in future studies of cabinet governments. [R]
72.4673 PRIOR, Alex ; LESTON-BANDEIRA, Cristina —
This article focuses on the UK Parliament’s recent efforts to engage citizens: specifically, the use of storytelling techniques to represent Parliament as a relevant and relatable institution. The use of these techniques is very recent within parliamentary engagement which, in its own right, is a relatively new addition to Parliament’s functions and activities. Building on theories of parliamentary engagement, representation, and narratology, we construct a new conceptual framework of ‘parliamentary storytelling’ through which these recent engagement efforts can be understood and examined. In demonstrating the utility of this framework, we analyse three contemporaneous case studies according to five key components (and the dynamic between them): storyteller, narrator, characters, plot, and audience. [R, abr.]
72.4674 REDBURN, F. Stevens —
Assessing the initial fiscal response reveals the extraordinary role the federal government plays during a [crisis] period as ultimate guarantor of the economy and social order. The federal government has constitutional responsibility and, under duress, is the only set of institutions with the capacity to play this role. Federal responses to ordinary emergencies generally assess their contribution to relief and recovery. In an extraordinary emergency such as the pandemic, responses may be assessed for their contributions to two additional policy objectives: readiness and resilience. An event of this magnitude also offers an opportunity to reconsider the aims of fiscal policies and whether the terms for measuring and judging policy outcomes are appropriate for such a period. [R, abr.]
72.4675 RUBIN, Marilyn M. ; WILLOUGHBY, Katherine —
This research compares state budget balancing strategies taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Distinguishing features of the two crises, as well as differences among the states, lead them to engage such strategies in similar and dissimilar ways. Federal aid during both fiscal disasters is also distinctive. During the Great Recession, federal stimulus funds to states supported budget balancing efforts. In contrast, until the COVID-19 relief bill of March 2021, federal assistance was primarily funneled directly to individuals and businesses and for pandemic-specific spending. This left states on their own to close budget gaps fueled by COVID-19. [R]
72.4676 SCHMIDT, Luisa ; DELICADO, Ana ; JUNQUEIRA, Luis —
This article focuses on climate change policies in Portugal. It seeks to understand institutional stances about climate change and to draw the links between organizations on policy influences, sources of scientific information, collaborations and advice. It is based on a questionnaire survey of the main institutional actors. This study concludes that there is a consensus among institutional actors on climate change and support for mitigation measures. The network analysis shows the centrality of governmental actors and some closure of the sectors, which tend to function in "silos", with weak institutional interactions in the period under analysis. [R]
72.4677 SHOMER, Yael ; RASCH, Bjørn Erik ; AKIRAV, Osnat —
The literature on government coalitions uses a common definition of when governments terminate and new ones form. This terminology is convenient and has served empirical coalitions studies quite well. This article challenges this terminology on the ground that it risks inflating the number of governments and, at least in some countries, severely distorts scholarly understanding of government duration and durability. Specifically, this article criticises the definitional condition that any partisan change in the composition of a government signifies its termination. The article demonstrates how using more precise definitions affects government duration considerably in a number of countries. In some cases, countries experience short-lived governments because minor partisan changes take place within a surplus coalition. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.4655]
72.4678 STEINSDORFF, Silvia von —
De jure, the State Duma has the constitutional prerequisites of a democratic parliament. De facto, the State Duma ekes out a shadowy existence in the power structure of the Russian state. It forms an important component part of the “vertical of power”, which helps President Putin secure his authoritarian regime. As an efficient legislative machine, the Duma creates the legal basis for bureaucratic presidential rule. [R]
72.4679 ŠUL’MAN, Ekaterina —
Russia’s State Duma is not a democratic parliament. But it is more than just staffage in a totalitarian system. And it is also more than a “rubber-stamp” that notarises legislative proposals submitted by the presidential administration. A mandate in the State Duma offers diverse opportunities to pursue personal or collective interests. The State Duma is an “battlefield of the elites” where ministries, authorities and economic interest groups feud with one another. Social interests are hardly represented in the Duma. [R]
72.4680 THÜRK, Maria —
Minority cabinets do not control a legislative majority and are thus vulnerable to parliamentary defeat. Consequently, the legislative performance of minority cabinets has been often brought into question. I argue that minority cabinets do not perform generally worse than majority cabinets. I hypothesize that only substantive minority cabinets which do not enjoy formal majority support by noncabinet parties work significantly worse than majority ones. The empirical analysis is based on a large new dataset that combines original information on minority-cabinet attributes and legislative data for 197 governments in 21 parliamentary democracies since the 1980s. The results of a fractional logit analysis support my theoretical expectations and show that not all types of minority cabinets perform worse than majority governments. [R, abr.]
72.4681 TRUSSLER, Marc —
I show how changes in the information environment have contributed to the nationalization of legislative behavior. Access to technologies like broadband have eroded local news media resources and led to a more partisan electorate. As such, increased connectivity causes legislators to prioritize national interests over the interests of their constituencies, behavior that is traditionally seen as an electoral liability. I use data on the rollout of broadband to relate changes in the information environment faced by legislators due to the 2002 redistricting to their behavior. I find that legislators who faced more informationally connected environments post-redistricting voted more in line with their parties, the president, and aligned interest groups. The results are robust to a specification examining within-member changes in the 108th-111th Congresses. [R, abr.]
72.4682 WALTHER, Daniel ; HELLSTRÖM, Johan —
The aim of this article is to examine which factors robustly influence cabinet duration in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In this respect the article investigates the role political institutions (including vote of no-confidence procedures), parliamentary and cabinet attributes, and various contextual factors have on cabinet stability. By using a type of sensitivity analysis (i.e. Extreme Bounds Analysis) on a panel of about 180 cabinets in CEE, it is possible to examine which factors consistently predict the probability of government survival. It is found that only a few factors are robust to alternative model specifications, namely: government type, fragmentation in parliament, the level of unemployment, and restrictive no-confidence votes procedures which make it more difficult for the opposition to bring down a government. Thus, the results indicate that cabinet duration in CEE is not primarily affected by sui generis factors to the region, but by factors of more general relevance. [R] [See Abstr. 72.4655]
72.4683 WEGMANN, Simone —
The organisation of legislative chambers and the consequences of parliamentary procedures have been among the most prominent research questions in legislative studies. Even though democratic elections not only lead to the formation of a government but also result in an opposition, the literature has mostly neglected oppositions and their role in legislative chambers. This paper proposes to fill this gap by looking at the legislative organisation from the perspective of opposition players. The paper focuses on the potential influence of opposition players in the policy-making process and presents data on more than 50 legislative chambers. The paper shows considerable variance of the formal power granted to opposition players. [R, abr.]
72.4684 WISTRICH, Harriet —
Focusing on a number of events during the month of March 2021, this article illustrates the enduring presence of misogynistic attitudes across criminal justice institutions, which leads to discriminatory practice and unjust outcomes for women. In particular, it focuses on the events following the high-profile disappearance and murder of Sarah Everard, the growing awareness of police perpetrated abuse, the collapse in rape prosecutions and the unwillingness of the courts to hold the Crown Prosecution Service accountable. The article references the Domestic Abuse Bill in the final stages of its parliamentary journey and what was missing from it. How women who kill are treated in the criminal justice system is a microcosmic illustration of misogyny in the criminal justice system. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.4802]
72.4685 WUCHERPFENNIG, Julian —
Scholars have debated whether executive power-sharing can secure peace in multiethnic states, but concerns about endogeneity due to reverse causation render this a difficult problem for empirical analyses. In the absence of a suitable instrumental variable, I explore an actor-based approach by studying a simple formal model. This highlights the conditions under which governments are likely to share power with a domestic challenger depending on the threat of violence. I then formulate a statistical “strategic selection” model that closely mirrors the theoretical model, thereby directly incorporating endogeneity. Applied to data at the level of ethnic groups, the estimation results indicate that power-sharing is indeed enacted strategically by governments in anticipation of the risk of conflict. However, I find that the critics have overstated the case against power-sharing: rather than spurring it, power-sharing robustly reduces civil conflict. [R, abr.]
72.4686 ZACKARIA, Abraham Ibn ; APPIAH-MARFO, Yaw —
Globally, Parliaments are democratic representation institutions responsible for law making, oversight over the executive, financial controls, and representation. There is ample evidence that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Africa are providing clientelistic services to constituents. This paper seeks to unearth the implications of the involvement of MPs in the provision of clientelistic goods and services on the effective performance of the MP’s traditional functions. The paper used data collected from 80 Members of the 6th Parliament of Ghana, in 2016 to draw its conclusions. The incidence of Political clientelism among MPs manifest in two dimensions: Providing individual constituent’s particular services and providing constituency-wide services. [R, abr.]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
72.4687 BALTZ, André —
This paper aims to critically explore how citizen dialogues are perceived by the municipalities and public servants who implement them. The question is answered using a multi-method approach: a content analysis of 213 self-reports on citizen dialogues from Swedish municipalities and 11 in-depth interviews with public servants working with citizen dialogues in a Swedish municipality. The findings show that citizen dialogues were thought of along three main narratives: information gathering, informing, and inclusion. Together, these narratives indicated a will to enhance informed decision-making. However, combining informed decision-making with broad participation poses challenges; the authority had to delimit participation, establish structures, educate, define citizens and adapt existing working methods to external stakeholders. [R, abr.]
72.4688 BREUX, Sandra —
Cet article vise à décrire la rémunération des élus municipaux au Canada, objet récurrent de débat dans les médias. À partir d’une enquête documentaire et d’un sondage auprès des élus de 430 municipalités, nous exposons la façon dont les élus municipaux perçoivent leur rémunération au regard de leurs revenus antérieurs et en comparaison avec d’autres municipalités, ainsi que le nombre d’heures qu’ils consacrent à la fonction. Nos résultats montrent l’existence de deux réalités peu visibles dans la rémunération accordée et interrogent les conditions d’entrée en politique, le degré de professionnalisation des élus et la compétitivité limitée de cette scène politique. [R]
72.4689 CADIOU, Stéphane —
L’exercice de fonctions électives locales est de plus en plus encadré par une réglementation et des instances judiciaires. Il est également soumis à une activité de surveillance assumée par des acteurs variés. Pour autant, cet encadrement n’empêche pas la persistance de zones d’ombre donnant lieu à des appréciations et des jugements controversés. À partir d’une étude de cas, cet article revient sur les affaires associées au maire d’une commune française. Il étudie les dynamiques de qualification des atteintes à la probité. Il éclaire alors les rapports variés que des acteurs politiques entretiennent avec les normes ainsi que les moyens matériels de faire de la politique. [R]
72.4690 CLIFFORD, Ben —
Reform of the planning system, and the local authority context in which it operates, has been high on the political agenda for all governments in the United Kingdom in the 21st century, reflecting common broader international trends under New Public Management and neoliberalism. Whilst such reforms have been subject to a great deal of academic attention, much of this work has focused on central government perspectives and understands these reforms based on policy documents and Ministerial statements. Whilst revealing important contextual, ideological and intentional imperatives, such perspectives can overlook the way in which reforms are mediated by frontline professionals as they implement them. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.4423]
72.4691 DISI PAVLIC, Rodolfo ; REBOLLEDO TORO, Edgar —
This article analyses the factors shaping the implementation of local participatory institutions (LPI) using evidence from Chile’s 345 communes. Based on the literature on participatory politics, it identifies several factors associated with the implementation of LPI, which are categorised into two dimensions: municipal supply vs. civic demand, and capacity vs. agency. Regression analyses show that explanations emphasising social structure, and to a lesser extent, municipal capacity, have more explanatory power than the ones emphasising municipal and social agency. Specifically, municipal financial and professional capacity, and local poverty and population size have important effects on LPI implementation. [R]
72.4692 GOODMAN, Christopher B. —
This paper analyzes the impact of local political fragmentation on population, employment, and per capita money income growth in 314 US metropolitan areas. The results are mixed. Smaller central cities and more special district overlap are important for population growth. The findings do not generalize in regard to employment or per capita money income growth. These findings mask important regional variation: political fragmentation is largely unrelated to economic growth in midwestern and western metropolitan areas. These results partially support the hypothesis that governmental fragmentation can enhance local economic growth; however, the overall impact appears muted relative to a metropolitan area’s economic characteristics. [R]
72.4693 KERROUCHE, Éric —
Cet article met en perspective la dualisation des fonctions entre amateurs et professionnels au sein de la population des élus municipaux français et son traitement inadéquat en matière statutaire. La première partie met l’accent sur le caractère chronophage et exigeant des fonctions électives, particulièrement pour les élus communaux titulaires d’un mandat exécutif qui aboutit pour certains d’entre eux à rendre l’exercice d’un mandat incompatible avec une activité professionnelle. La seconde partie montre que les évolutions statutaires mises en place par la récente loi Engagement et proximité ne répondent pas ou mal à des attentes différenciées mal appréhendées par le texte. [R]
72.4694 MEVELLEC, Anne ; CHIASSON, Guy ; COUTURE, Jérôme —
L’objet de ce texte est d’analyser le contexte, le contenu et les effets de la modification législative concernant la rémunération des élus municipaux, entrée en vigueur en janvier 2018, afin d’en saisir la portée au sein des transformations contemporaines du monde municipal québécois. En particulier, nous nous intéressons à la manière dont l’enjeu de la rémunération est cadré par les principales associations municipales de la province, et comment il a trouvé sa place dans une réforme municipale plus large. Pour ce faire, nous avons réalisé une analyse des documents produits sur ce sujet par les deux principales associations municipales ainsi que ceux relatifs au processus législatif (mémoires et débats associés au projet de loi no 122). [R, abr.]
72.4695 MORISSETTE, Benoît —
Municipalities have long been regarded as creatures of the provinces, political bodies subordinated to the authority of provincial governments. However, recent political changes suggest that they are now seen as a third order of government within the Canadian Federation. These include the formal recognition of municipalities as a level of government by the provinces and multilevel governance practices. In this article, I argue that these changes contribute to the federalization of relations between municipalities and higher governments. While they may undermine the effectiveness of urban governance, these developments can also strengthen the democratic foundations of the Constitution. [R]
72.4696 OGENTHO, Maxwell Poul, et al. —
This study uses social capital theory to explain the power of social capital in mediating relationship between citizens’ behaviour and compliance in local governments. The research builds on past studies that used citizenship, agency and stewardship theories to examine the mediating role of social capital in the association between citizens’ behaviour and compliance in local governments. The findings revealed that social capital partially mediates the association between citizens’ behaviour and compliance. This article urges citizens to come together, leveraging on social capital to garner critical mass to drive compliance. The study findings present both policy and managerial implications. [R]
72.4697 SMAGACZ-POZIEMSKA, Marta ; BIERWIACZONEK, Krzysztof —
In this article, we analyse the formation of local communities from the perspective of the practices of parental involvement. Adopting a practice-based approach to empirical research on six estates in three Polish cities, we reconstruct the connections between the spatial logics of the housing areas, national education, and housing polices, and their impact on the everyday life practices inside and outside the estate. Using the category of practice of parental involvement, we show the complex, long-term impact of state and local education policies on everyday life and, as a result, on the processes of structuring or fragmentation of territorial communities. The results of our qualitative studies not only develop knowledge about the connections between national polices and everyday life practices but also, we hope, could help to design effective public policies. [R]
72.4698 STARKE, Tim —
Demographic change poses numerous challenges for municipalities. These include, in particular, the effects of the age structure (expenditure-increasing effects due to a youth bias, tendency-relieving effects due to an increasing proportion of over-65s), but also so-called cost remanence effects. In order to empirically examine the extent to which the population structure and the population decline affect municipal budgets, a data-set of the municipalities and independent cities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the period 2000-2016 is used. The results show that the ongoing decline in the number of inhabitants and the changing age structure in the municipalities of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania lead to a higher level of per capita grant amounts and expenditures. [R, abr.]
72.4699 VASVÁRI, Tamás —
Previous research has found that there is no uniform budget constraint for local governments: politically favoured local governments receive additional funds and are subject to less fiscal discipline. If so, the fair distribution between beneficiaries and cost bearers of the local fiscal policy is not realised. The paper focuses on this phenomenon in the light of political clientelism. We conduct an analysis regarding the Hungarian local government system between 2006 and 2018 to capture the political patterns in local fiscal policy and central granting policy. Local governments in opposition were underfinanced in terms of discretionary and EU funds, and since 2012 they have also had limited access to credit markets to obtain additional funds. Favoured municipalities enjoy more funds and can deliver more projects to their citizens — at the expense of unfavoured ones. [R, abr.]
72.4700 VUKIĆEVIĆ, Boris ; ŠTURANOVIĆ, Petar —
In this article, we deal with the problematics of the creation of new municipalities in Montenegro. We put the ongoing legal and political dynamics regarding local government organization in Montenegro in their historical and regional context before analyzing the political developments that led to movements for the formation of new municipalities. We explore specific cases in order to examine the ethnic/national background of such movements and to study the causes and consequences of such a way of creating local organizational units. As the central issue is the influence of ethnopolitics on the formation of local administration units in Montenegro, particular emphasis is placed on how the dynamics of Montenegrin party politics influence the country’s legislative framework of local administration and its implementation. The article analyzes the role of the parties representing national minorities in the decentralization process, and the developments of minority-majority relations in regard to local ethnopolitics. [R, abr.]